• Jon Gosselin brought his daughter a birthday cake that read, "Happy Birthday Maddy" today. The only problem? Her name is spelled "Mady." But it's not "Johnathon's" fault: Entertainment Tonight ordered the cake for him.

• The owner of Cupcake Cafe in New York says that before Jon Gosselin came in with a TV crew to buy his daughter a birthday cake, she got a call from "a person from 'Entertainment Something,' ordering the cake and asking permission to shoot inside the bakery when Jon came in." Jon started checking out cupcakes in the store and was surprised to learn a cake had already been ordered for him. A rep from Entertainment Tonight says says the show didn't pay for the $94 cake. [TMZ]
• Another court date has been set for Jon and Kate Gosselin after their hearing this week was cancelled when the judge's wife died. They'll appear before an arbitrator, who could order Jon to return the money he took from their joint account. Jon has filed papers claiming Kate is the one who looted the account. Jon has also made a deal with a TV show to allow it to film his kids birthday party today even though he doesn't want them to be filmed on Kate Plus 8. Kate's lawyer says, "I've never seen a greater hallmark for hypocrisy personified." [TMZ]
• Jon Gosselin said of Kate Gosselin appearing in a sketch on The Jay Leno Show last night, "It's messed up, the timing." He added, "What she does on TV, that's her career. I'm happy for her career... I hope she can be happy for my career [and] we can have a career on TV, kind of together, but our kids will come off." [Entertainment Tonight]
• Michael Lohan says an intervention is being planned for Lindsay Lohan because she's addicted to prescription medications including Adderall, Zoloft, anti-anxiety drugs, and bi-polar medication. "Over the next couple of weeks I'm going to be doing things in a pretty public way,"says Michael Lohan, "But Dina has got to get on the same page with me. It's a serious situation. You can't just talk about it and tell me that you want to do an intervention and then do nothing." [Radar Online]
• Supposedly Radar Online has proof that Khloe Kardashian and Lamar Odom's wedding wasn't legally binding and Liza Morales, his ex and the mother of his two kids says, "To tell you the truth the whole situation is ‘so out there' and although it still hurts I find it laughable." [Radar Online]
• Khloe Kardashian and Lamar Odom have no plans to go on a honeymoon yet because, "I'm filming, and he has a season until who knows when," says Khloe. [People]
• A police officer testified in the John Travolta case today that Pleasant Bridgewater burned a copy of the extortion document and flushed it down a toilet. [TMZ]
• Angelina Jolie says of her relationship with her formerly estranged father Jon Voight, "We're in contact now and writing letters. My parents gave me a strong social conscience as well as any acting genes I may have." She added that she doesn't want her kids to be raised as, "Children who have 'movie star' parents. I grew up around that myself and I want to make sure ours are removed from it." [The Sun]
• Worldwide Pants says Stephanie Birkitt hasn't been banned from David Letterman's set, she's just on a paid leave of absence. [Extra]
• Joe Halderman, who is accused of trying to blackmail David Letterman, told the paparazzi outside his house that he's "not trying to hide or run, but there's nothing I can say." [TMZ]
• Some Australians are calling Harry Connick Jr. a hypocrite for criticizing a blackface Jackson 5 impersonation on Australian TV last night because they've unearthed a video of Connick impersonating a southern preacher on Mad TV 13 years ago... except Connick isn't playing a black man and isn't wearing blackface. A commenter writes, "If he can get away with that in the US why is a dated and harmless blackface skit on Aussie TV so offensive to him? The man is a hypocrite of the worst kind." [Sydney Morning Herald]
• Travis Barker visited the Georgia burn center where he was treated last year after he survived a plane crash. "I'm here to say 'thank you' to everyone who took care of me after the accident," he said. "I was sort of unconscious the last tiem I was here, and I felt like I owed them a big 'thank you.'" [MTV]
• At the link, Method Mad talks to radio personality Big Topper about his time in prison for tax evasion and calls jail, "cool." [Perez Hilton]
• In court yesterday Christie Brinkley and her ex-husband Peter Cook accused each other of violating the terms of their settlement and custody agreements. Cook says, "She is doing everything she can to ruin my relationship with my kids," and Brinkley says he violated their divorce agreement by going on talk shows. [People]
• Peter Andre got into a fight at a hotel bar with Katie' Price's gay friends, who were screaming "childish abuse" at him. [Daily Mail]
• Terry Christian gave La Toya Jackson two unpublished photos of Michael Jackson. Terry said: "I've got two photos for La Toya, one of Michael Jackson and one of the Jackson Five, from my mate in Manchester who was the official photographer on Top Of The Pops for years." [The Mirror]
• A rep for Dr. Phil says he did nothing wrong to the woman who says he held her captive in his offices, forced her to stare at a naked man, and grabbed her breast. He released a statement saying, "Dr. Phil is never alone in the House with any of these guests and all of his interactions are captured on video and/or audio tape. All guests are, of course, free to come and go as they please and once Ms. Dieu expressed her discomfort, and producers ascertained there was nothing they could do to help her, they called a car service to return her to her home." [TMZ]
• Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen are in a "race to the alter" ... even though neither is even engaged. [Star]
• Liam Gallagher says, "Oasis is no longer. I think we all know that. So that's done. I know. Without a doubt. And it's a shame, but that's life. We had a good run at it. The thing about Oasis is ... we ended Oasis. No one ended it for us. Which was pretty, kind of ... cool." [The Mirror]
• Jennifer Hudson says of her pregnancy, "David and I were the only people who knew for a long time. I would forget I was pregnant, it was so easy. I didn't have any morning sickness, no cravings either. I just thought, ‘Oh, well, we'll wait until it'll tell on itself.' I didn't show until I was seven months so that made it easy right there." [People]
• Nick Lachey and Vanessa Minnillo are back on... but do you care? [People]
• Jon Hamm is featured in the new Reader's Digest in an article called "Tall, Dark, & Wholesome." [ONTD]
• John Cleese says, "I went through a very unpleasant divorce and discovered just how hopeless the American legal system is... For me, most of the things people know me from -Fawlty Towers or A Fish Called Wanda - are things I've been able to write on spec because I had enough money to live. Now I have to pay one million dollars a year until I'm 76. So that means I have to organize my life around earning the first million dollars every year. And the normal sources of income for people like me are drying up. There aren't as many film and TV parts - and you can do interesting documentaries but they don't pay anything. So I'm doing one-man shows and other things." [N.Y. Magazine]
• Valerie Bertinelli says, "I've realized I'm more important than food is. I love a big slice of pizza. But I love myself more. Being thin is about changing the way you think about yourself. It's about saying you deserve to be healthy. In no way have I perfected this eating thing, and I don't know that I ever will. But life is about making progress. It's not about perfection." [People]
• Patrick Stewart told a group of school children that he became interested in acting because going to the movies was an escape from his abusive dad. "My home life wasn't very pleasant, and not fun, so getting out, not being at home, especially to have the opportunity to escape into a fantasy world was bliss," he said. "I hated it when the movie or the Saturday morning ended, and I had to go back to real life. So, in a sense I was being set up for being an actor, for entering this world of make-believe." [The Telegraph]
• Carey Mulligan says of Nick Hornby, who wrote her film An Education, "I'm not surprised, because a lot of the characters he writes in his books, he writes really well. But it is a massive achievement for a male writer to get into the head of a girl of that age and write such a three dimensional lead character. Not a girl who's just an accessory to the story, but actually is the story. It's not surprising because I know how talented he is. I think he did a brilliant job at creating her, being a man and creating this really believable, truthful kind of girl."[Inside Movies]
• "Photo shoots used to make me weep," says Carey Mulligan, "It's easier if I wear something that's not my stuff. It's more of a performance, less about me." [L.A. Times]
• Carey Mulligan says she's adjusting well to being in the United States: "Like, I wish I could say "jackass" and make it sound as cool as an American. I say jackass as, like, [in her British accent] "jahkahs." It just doesn't have the punch. So I've fallen in love with, like, lingo, you know. And New York. I was here for six months last year, and I didn't want to leave then, and this time I don't want to leave. So I don't think I'm going home. I haven't told anyone in London yet." [N.Y. Magazine]
• Peter Sarsgaard says of his character in An Education, who has an affair with a 16-year-old girl, "It didn't seem like he wanted to have sex with her. That was one of my first reactions... I think he actually wants to be her age. I think he thinks he's her age some of the time, and I think he is someone who has a very difficult idea of accepting the circumstances of his own life, and so, like a lot of people-and I mean a lot of people-he is very capable of explaining his life to himself as something that it isn't, and living in a kind of false reality, and living in a bubble of a fantasy. And that's how everybody always ends up doing everything, you know? I mean, there are very few people that wake up every morning and say 'I'm going to do something today that is wrong,' you know? And then go and do it." [Gothamist]

• Donald Trump is calling for people to boycott Kanye West due to "Swift-gate," "so this kind of thing doesn't happen again." He says, "He couldn't care less about Beyonce. It was grandstanding to get attention." From one who'd know. [TMZ]

• Kanye West apologized again to Taylor Swift on his blog, writing: "I feel like Ben Stiller in "Meet the Parents" when he messed up everything and Robert De Niro asked him to leave... That was Taylor's moment and I had no right in any way to take it from her. I am truly sorry." He wrote another statement last night, but it was quickly deleted. [TMZ]
• Taylor Swift told reporters after the incident, "Well, I was standing on stage because I was really excited because I had just won the award. And then I was really excited because Kanye West was on stage. And then I wasn't so excited anymore after that." [Us]
• More celebrities are weighing in on Kanye. John Mayer Tweeted: "Big love to my girl @taylorswift13. A class act." Joel Madden writes: "WOW Taylor Swift's first VMA and she didn't even get to ENJOY it. Kanye You were just a bully on that one man." Katy Perry gets right to the point: "F**K U KANYE. IT'S LIKE U STEPPED 0N A KITTEN." [TMZ]
• Kanye may have messed with the wrong lady. The guy who played "Wolf" on American Gladiators wrote: "Just thought Kanye might want to know I hang with alot of the Country Artist and I will bump into him somewhere... HARD and several times!!! He is an ass and needs taken down, maybe Criss B can be there too. School is about to open and lessons about to be taught!" [TMZ]
• Kelly Clarkson wrote a blog post addressed to Kanye saying: "I've seen you do some pretty shitty things, but you just keep amazing me with your tactless, asshole ways. It's absolutely fascinating how much I don't like you. I like everyone. I even like my asshole ex that cheated on me over you… which is pretty odd since I don't even personally know you... The best part of this evening is that you weren't even up for THIS award and yet you still have a problem with the outcome. Is winning a moon man that much of a life goal?? You can have mine if it will shut you up. Is it that important, really??" [Rolling Stone]
• Even Joe Jackson bashed Kanye, saying, "I don't know what he was doing, he jumped up on stage and snatched that microphone out of that poor girl's hand. They should blackball him out of show business for that. He just leapt up there, that was bad." [TMZ]
• It seems Russell Brand is the only one who has any sympathy for Kanye. He says, "I know Kanye, and I know he's a nice bloke. We all make mistakes in life... We're all people, these things are a bit silly, no one died." [People]
• Telepictures, the production company behind Ellen DeGeneres' and Tyra Banks' shows, wants to develop a View-like show starring Kate Gosselin and Paula Deen. "They're looking around and casting for other women to be on the show with them," said a source. "But they want all the women to be moms." [E!]
• While co-hosting The View this morning, Kate Gosselin said of her divorce, "This is definitely, I'm not going to lie, difficult... For the sake of my children, I'm going to take the high road" and not discuss the matter further. [People]
• Kate Gosselin said at the Cleveland Women's show on Friday, "I've lost a lot of control in my life," adding, "At the beginning of all of this, you've heard me say before, I didn't want fans gawking, I didn't want people gawking, I just wanted to be myself, my family. I have learned, I appreciate your support, I need you, I love you, thank you." [Us]
• On the red carpet of the Toronto International Film Festival paparazzi told Colin Farrell's sister to move along so they could get a shot of him and he grabbed a photographer by the collar and shouted at him until he apologized. [Daily Mail]
• Ne-Yo has been in the studio with Rihanna, working on her next album. He says, "Expect an edgier, almost angrier Rihanna on this one... Rihanna says some things on this album that you've never heard her say before." [E!]
• "All kinds of things keep me grounded. My dogs and having to wake up and walk them every morning and having to walk them before bed at night," says Mischa Barton. "The routine of everything I do – going to work every day here and working on a television series and how much work that is." [People]
• Elton John and his partner David Furnish won't be able to adopt a 14-month-old HIV-positive boy from Ukraine because the country requires adoptive parents to be no older than 45 and married. Elton said, "He has stolen my heart. And he has stolen David's heart and it would be wonderful if we can have a home." [AP]
• Nick Hornby and Ben Folds wrote a song called "Levi Johnston's Blues," which includes the lyrics, "I like to do some shit, do some chillin' I guess/ You fuck with me and I'll kick your ass." [New York Magazine]
• Harrison Ford says, "The story for the new Indiana Jones is in the process of taking form...Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and myself are agreed on what the fifth adventure will concern, and George is actively at work. If the script is good, I'll be very happy to put the costume on again." [People]
• Hulk Hogan is suing his own lawyers because he claims he paid them more than $1 million to represent his son Nick after his 2007 car crash but the law firm never informed him that his insurance company offered to represent him for free. [TMZ]
• Terri Irwin is getting caught up in a legal battle with the distributor of Croc Chocs and Zoogle Jellies, candies that feature a photo of Steve Irwin and are sold at the Australia Zoo. [News.com.au]
• The ACLU says Richard Hatch is being held under "harsh" conditions in a Masssachusetts jail for giving an unauthorized interview while he was on house arrest, and is being kept in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day. [USA Today]
• Oprah Winfrey says she's willing to go to Cophenhagen next month to help convince the International Olympic Committee that they should pick Chicago for the 2016 Summer Olympics. Chicago is up against Tokyo, Madrid, and Rio de Janeiro. [Chicago Tribune]
• Oprah Winfrey says even though she threw her support behind Barack Obama during the campaign, "I have not said one thing about this political situation and don't intend to... Everybody knows that I was a big campaigner for Obama and I still am. I think he's doing a great job. I think that it's the toughest job in the world with the economy and health care and all of that." [AP]
• Seth Meyers says he'll be doing 'Weekend Update' alone on the upcoming season of SNL, despite reports that Kristen Wiig would become his co-anchor. "I'm so heartbroken that the Internet, for the first time, was wrong about something," Meyers said. "How are we ever going to trust the Internet again?" [CNN]
• Lil Wayne's first child with Lauren London was born last Wednesday, and singer Nivea claims that she's also pregnant with his child. He already has two children from previous relationships. [E!]
• Michael Bay says he doesn't approve a letter from the crew of Transformers calling Megan Fox stupid and ungracious after she compared Bay to Hitler. He wrote on his website, "I don't condone the crew letter to Megan... and I don't condone Megan's outlandish quotes. But her crazy quips are part of her crazy charm. The fact of the matter is I still love working with her, and I know we still get along. I even expect more crazy quotes from her on 'Transformers 3.'" [UPI]
• On the finale of America's Got Talent on Wednesday nigh,t Susan Boyle will wear a Suzanne Neville dress the designer says will "really wow" the crowd. She says, "The brief was to make Susan look super elegant and so we created a long, classic black gown for Susan to wear." [People]
• At the Toronto Film Festival David Duchovny said of his wife Tea Leoni and their two kids, "I had to leave them this morning to come here – that's tough," adding that though he and Tea separated last fall now at home, "Everything is great." [People]
• RHOA's Kandi Burrus says of her relationship with her fiance AJ, "We're on hiatus. He's a great guy and he's not the type to sit on his behind like a scrub, so it has nothing to do with that. Yes, he has a lot of children, and yes, I didn't know about them all at first but I got over it because as long as you handle your responsibility and spend time with your children it's not an issue for me. Another thing I want to set the record straight on is that AJ was married before. A lot of people make comments like, if he didn't marry his other children's mothers then why do you think he's going to marry you." [ONTD]
• Robert Downey, Jr. says of his relationship with Jamie Foxx's character in The Soloist, "In some ways the film feels like a love-story. A platonic love story, of course. But it's also about faith – about believing in that connection between people, and to me that means believing in ourselves. It's funny to say this about what I guess is a big Hollywood movie, but actually it feels like something more personal, something quite pure." [The Telegraph]
• Beth Ditto says she doesn't mind that many people know who she is, but have never heard her music. She explains: "I'm not someone who says, 'It's all about the music, dude.' As a woman I think the media really want to see you demonised for having a life outside your musical family. A woman has her nuclear family, and that's supposed to be all there is, and if she steps outside that role of wife, mother or daughter to become an independent personality, she's immediately criticised for neglecting her motherly duty. That's exactly how I feel about Gossip; like I should have that motherly duty to my band. If I were a man I don't think it would be a problem." [The Independent]

Things I've Learned From Women Who've Dumped Me

You'd think, based on the title of the anthology Things I've Learned From Women Who've Dumped Me, that the men who've contributed essays to it have learned something from women who've dumped them. Well, some of them have! Actually, as I flip through the book again now, I can only find one essay that has a thoughtful take-away that might help someone who finds him or herself in a similar situation. It's by Ok Go singer Damian Kulash, Jr. and it's called "A Dog Is No Reason To Stay Together," but an apter title might be, "Don't fool yourself into thinking you can make a long-distance relationship work, especially if you are in a band that has just recently become successful." Damian examines his relationship with former live-in love Amanda with sober maturity. "It was love - love like you see in movies. Except in movies, relationships don't change, or grow, or slowly fall apart. They either last forever or end mercifully fast with a thrown plate and a jump cut." That sentence is exactly as good as this anthology gets.

Things with Amanda didn't last forever, but Damian's bio notes that he's now married with two dogs. Actually, almost all of the men in this anthology are married, and Damian is one of the few who don't make a big deal about it in their stories. You know that thing Neal Pollack (oh, he's in here!) does where he's like "I'm married, did I mention that I'm married, I can't be that bad of a guy because someone married me, okay?" That's a recurring theme here.

Most of these guys are comedians or comedy writers or memoirists of the "I'm a lovable loser, haha" variety - Andy Richter, Nick Hornby, A.J. Jacobs, Will Forte, and a slew of former Onion and SNL writers are represented (Chuck Klosterman, where are you?) They often begin their essays, especially when writing about high-school or college-era rejections, by marveling that any woman has ever found them attractive. "God bless arty girls and booze!" Andy Richter writes of the factors that finally enabled his college-fatty self to get laid. "During the course of the evening - aided no doubt by generous portions of cheap beer - I tricked her into liking me," is how Will Forte describes meeting his first serious girlfriend. Whenever men write about getting laid despite being outwardly undesirable, I immediately get suspicious. It's so The Game, you know? It just seems like a weird kind of inverse bragging, especially when they talk about how attractive the girls they somehow managed to bone were, especially when said girls' attractiveness is the only thing about said girls that seems to merit mentioning. Okay, boys, we get it. Even before you were semifamous for being smart and funny, you could still get some. Probably you were smart and funny even then! Um, good job!

The only thing less appealing than false modesty is outright bragging, and there's some of that here too. In 'Things More Majestic And Terrible Than You Could Ever Imagine,' Onion writer Todd Hanson catalogues a litany of women who've dumped him that reads more like a sexual highlights reel. On a list entitled 'Things positive," he writes, "Sex with two heavily tattooed punk-rock drummer chicks whose breasts bounce hypnotically as they hammer away onstage is pretty much as amazing as you'd imagined. I cannot emphasize this point enough." Wow, Todd. Two.

But bragging is still more appealing than vengeful muckraking, and there are a couple of essays in this anthology that have to be filed under that heading. These are essays that seem designed with a single reader in mind - the girl who will glimpse this book on the 'new nonfiction' or maybe even the 'Valentine's Day' table, see her exboyfriend's name on the cover, and open it up to the essay about what a terrible person she is. Damian Kulash's admission that he misses his ex-dog far more than he misses his ex-girlfriend pales in comparison to Andy Selsberg's essay 'A Grudge Can Be Art." Andy details his affair with a nineteen year old aspiring actress eleven years his junior. To be fair, he doesn't seem to be taking any pains to portray himself as anything like a decent or mature person - he acknowledges that continuing to hate a woman with whom he spent less than forty-eight hours ("and that includes being asleep together") for fucking his roommates is pretty ridiculous.

But his parting shot is still kind of stunning in its naked vindictiveness: "I do know where I'll see her eventually: on a reality show. She is genetically and socially engineered to tear through one of those setups like an erotic tornado." There's no way the intervening years could've changed this girl, of course. After all, they haven't changed Andy! Some boys will never learn.

*Full disclosure: the "guy" is the fiance of my best friend and former Jezebel contributor "Heather" and he is not a jerk at all; in fact he is much better and nicer than I ever imagined he would be when he brutally ass-raped the first piece of mine he edited back in the day (;-) Ben!) so that fits right in with my thesis. Also, sorry Emily, for writing this. It needed to be done. That was some fucked Up ish. And readers, sorry for all the "meta." It's Friday. That is my only excuse.